HANG TIME SOUTHWEST – When the Clippers visit the Grizzlies tonight (8 ET, League Pass), Blake Griffin will once again tussle with old pal — nemesis, if you must — Zach Randolph.

Combined, you’re gazing at 511 pounds (listed weights) of pure power forward. When they get together, these two men of behemoth proportion often get tangled up, tied up, jostle and grapple. It’s not uncommon for it to end with the two twisted up like a giant pretzel on the hardwood.

Just search YouTube for either of last two playoff series between the Clips and Griz for video evidence.

Of course, it’s not unusual to see Griffin locked in a heated exchange or physically locked with another player. If NBA rosters were bound together like a phone book, chances are you could close your eyes, open it up and point a finger at a player that has tried to rile Griffin.

There’s just something about the 6-foot-10 brick wall that is Griffin that gets opponents a little on edge. Probably the part about him being 6-10 and built like a brick wall. There’s that whole dunking thing, too. Chaos can, and does, arise. Griffin tries to remain calm.

“I’ve been experiencing things like that since high school,” Griffin said during All-Star weekend. “Being a bigger guy you kind of get fouled a lot, fouled harder, and it’s something my dad always taught me and told me is just to respond with how you play because you don’t want to put your team in a bad situation by getting kicked out of the game.”

Sometimes tempers flare, stares turn into shoves, teams converge and elbows can fly and sometimes worse. Even when cooler heads seemingly prevail, ejections happen. Like when Griffin got the hook at Golden State on Christmas Day. It started when the Warriors’ Green threw an elbow at Griffin’s head and neck region, drawing a Flagrant 2 foul, which carries an automatic ejection. Griffin took exception to the play and got hit with a technical foul.

Then, early in the fourth quarter, Griffin and Bogut got into a skirmish after Bogut got his arm up around Griffin’s head. Bogut received a Flagrant 1, and Griffin, who felt he did not retaliate, got nailed with a second technical resulting in an automatic ejection. Griffin couldn’t believe it and the next day the league agreed, issuing a statement saying Griffin should not have received the second technical, and thus should not have been ejected. But the damage was done and the Clippers lost the game, 105-103.

“He’s in a great place right now,” Clippers point guard Chris Paul said of Griffin’s ability to mostly keep himself in check. “He doesn’t react to all those type of things. At the end of the day he knows we want to win games.”

Getting unnecessarily bruised and battered has long been a big-man complaint. Hakeem Olajuwon to Shaquille O’Neal to Yao Ming to Griffin, they’ve all complained, and mostly rightly so, that they’re getting killed down there. The biggest of the big tend to overpower their opponents, it puts their opponent’s in a bad mood and cheap shots the referees don’t see can result.

“There’s moments definitely when you’re close to snapping, but I haven’t gotten to that point yet,” Griffin said. “When I feel like somebody is trying to hurt me, physically hurt me, that’s the point where you have to stand up for yourself.”

Old-school big guys see the effect Blake’s power and size have on opponents and three Hall of Famers of a more physical era of NBA basketball — Shaq, Charles Barkley and Karl Malone – have come out and said Blake needs to stand up for himself more often and more forcefully.

Barkley on a TNT postgame show earlier this season: “You’ve got to draw a line in the sand and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to start hitting y’all back.”

Malone said he loves watching Griffin play and feels his frustration. During a recent appearance as guest analyst on a Utah Jazz game, Malone said he’d love to spend some time with Griffin: “First thing I’d do [is say], ‘Blake, the next time one guy cheap shots you, just lose your mind, I would pay your fine. Lose your mind, run roughshod.”

Griffin said he hears those guys, but taking things into his own hands is not that simple.

“The game was a little different back then,” Griffin said. “You could punch somebody in the face and they’d just get a technical and you just keep on playing, so I completely understand what they’re saying, and I completely understand the words of advice. But it’s one of those things where I’m trying to deal with it on my own terms. I don’t think anybody’s out there really trying to hurt you, I think just bigger guys — I’ve watched Dwight Howard for a lot of years take a lot of punishment because he’s so big and so strong.”

Just another angle to watch tonight as you settle in for Clippers-Grizzlies.

8 Comments

zbo has been in the league how long now . . .10 years maybe and has done what? . . .nothing . . .when he’s gone nobody will ever say zbo again . . .blake on the other hand could become top 5 pf of all time if he keeps progressing at this rate . . . so who owns who . . .if you watch their games . . .randolph always gets help from gasol . . .he cant stop blake one on one . . .seems like randolph always takes cheap shots cause he knows his skills will no longer improve and blake is just getting started . . . clippers fan or not it seems pretty obvious

He may seem calm, but if you pay attention, he starts 95 percent of the incidents he’s involved in. He’s fling his body, or overreacts to arms getting tangled. Even in this clip you see him keeping randolphs head down with his elbow. He bring it upon himself.